Region V Report:                      April 20-21, 2006

On February 16^th, several members of region 5 were trained to be Financial Literacy counselors by the Westchester Housing Fund, Inc. This was a continuation of the session that had been held in September 2005. It was recommended at that time that we avail ourselves to this training venue. The session lasted about 3 hours and went over materials presented in a binder. The material covered credit reports, credit history, credit scoring, identity theft issues, checking and savings accounts, investments, student loans and other financial products of which students should be made aware. The binder is the real treasure as it is filled with worksheets and other materials that can copied and distributed to students. The trained Region V members said that they would be available to other regions to go over this training.

On March 17^th, we held our regular regional meeting at Ulster Community College. Jim Vallee gave a detailed presentation on the Deficit Reduction Act. The region also discussed looking into facilities for an annual conference proposal.

The next meeting will be the Tri-Regional meeting on May 17^th.